Fadedwords

I received my Christmas gift from one of my best friends, Monica, yesterday.  I was very excited because she had said how excited she was to give it to me.  When I opened it, I cannot begin to explain how moved and excited I was.

Yes, she drew that.  All by herself.  I’ve been hoping she would do a pencil drawing for me ever since I saw the first one she did.  I have one of her paintings that she gave me for Christmas several years ago hanging on the wall in my bedroom.  She is an incredibly talented photographer, but I will always think that her ability to draw is just astounding.  Please stop by her website and take a look at what she can do.  She is a photographer, portrait drawer, and she also makes incredible wooden boxes.

This drawing will be framed as soon as  I get paid and will be hung on our living room wall above the couch.  I want every single person who comes into this house to see what a talented and amazing friend I have.

Thank you Mon, for such an amazing gift.  I absolutely love it.

OK, so I do have a picture.  I know, shocking that out of the hundreds of photos I’ve taken of this dog I could find one…

Occasionally he runs like this directly at one of us.  It’s not as terrifying as it could be, simply because we know he’s not going to eat us.  But imagine you didn’t know him.  The big beast.

The last few days have been busy.  Here’s a breakdown:

• Thursday and Friday I was home sick.  Bronchitis.  Yay.
• Friday afternoon I manned up and drove to Plymouth.  I’d had the trip planned for about a month, and there was no way I was canceling.
• Spent about 2 hours hanging out with friends/former coworkers at the middle school I worked at when I first got down here.
• Had a great conversation with Jay, a very good friend from that school.  It was great to hang out with him.
• Went out to dinner with Courtney and Paul at Mama’s Pizza, my favorite place ever.
• Went to the most redneck party of my life.  No, seriously.  There was a confederate flag prominently displayed on the wall, a stripper pole installed in the ceiling, and I was one of two people who were not smoking.  Also, there was a girl going on and on about how much she hated another girl because she happened to like the company of black people.  Of course, she did not say it that way.   I lasted about two hours.  The combination of severe smoke inhalation, bronchitis and being a yankee that cannot put up with ignorance got the best of me.
• Up late late late on Friday night coughing, tossing, and turning.
• Slept in on Saturday.
• Went to the new Super W*l-mart in Williamston and got supplies for a dinner of snack food (cheese, crackers, veggies, french bread).
• Hung out with Courtney and Kristen enjoying food and many laughs.
• Watched Wall-E, which was incredibly adorable.
• Drove home today.
• Finished up the very last of my Christmas shopping.
• I got home at 1:30 and have been baking ever since.
• I have finished up gift boxes for my administrators, two friends, and the family of the little girl I provided homebound instruction for.  I’ll have 3 more boxes for people on my committee done as well.

I have to bake another batch of sugar cookies, oatmeal raisin cookies, and chocolate chip cookies.  I also need to make up another couple batches of peppermint bark.  Then all of my holiday baking will be done.

This week is going to drag by, simply because it’s the week before an extended break.  It is made worse by the fact that I have so much to look forward to next week because we’re going to New York for Christmas.  I can’t wait to get up there, see my family, and enjoy the time off with Jake.

I don’t think there will be a Merlin Monday tomorrow.  I don’t have any new photos of him, as I’ve been sick and way too busy to take any.  We’ll see how it goes though.

As one of the perks of being a NaNo winner this year, there is a self-publishing company that offered every winner a free proof copy of their book.  It will be bound and look just like any book you’d buy at the bookstore.  You have the option after getting the proof to sell your book on Amazon or in a e-store that you create.

At first I wasn’t going to take advantage of this.  The more I thought about it, the more I realized how cool it would be to see something I wrote actually published.  I went through yesterday and did all the steps to get the proof.  I created a title and uploaded the finished story.  It came out pretty nice.  I’m not going to sell it on Amazon or anywhere else… I’m just going to get the one copy.  I know that nobody would buy it, and that’d be a bit depressing.  It’s better to just get this one and show it off.  It’s incredibly cool to know that there’s this tool that I could use if I ever wanted to try to self-publish on a somewhat large scale. 

Hopefully all my work will clear the formatting check and I’ll have a copy of my novel soon.  As I was editing it, I realized it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had originally thought.  So, in a few weeks I will be a self-published author.  Pretty nifty.

Merlin is always incredibly helpful.